Every day, many U.S. families must make the impossible choice of falling into debt to pay for critical medical care or foregoing necessary treatment. In 2014, 64 million people were struggling with medical debt and it is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States.
Washington, DC – Next week, the Senate will vote on President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos. Ahead of the vote, Mark Huelsman, Senior Policy Analyst and higher education expert at Demos, issued the follow statement:
Washington DC – In the closest confirmation vote for a Secretary of Education to date, Betsy DeVos was confirmed by the narrow margin of 51-50, with the historic tie-breaking vote coming from Vice President Mike Pence. Following the decision, Mark Huelsman, Senior Policy Analyst and higher education expert at Demos, issued the follow statement:
“The unprecedented level of uncertainty shown by both Democrats and Republicans surrounding Betsy DeVos’ ability to serve as Secretary of Education should have been enough to disqualify her from assuming this position.
April 9, 2017 (New York, NY) -- Tamara Draut, Vice President of Policy and Research at Demos, released the following statement after New York became the first state in the country to pass tuition-free college:
New York, NY - With the House of Representatives poised to vote on H.R. 10, the Financial CHOICE Act, Amy Traub, Associate Director, Policy and Research at Demos, issued the following statement:
July 21, 2017 (New York, NY) – In honor of the sixth anniversary of the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Tamara Draut, Vice President of Policy and Research, issued the following statement.
Washington, DC – Today, Demos, a New York public policy organization, released a first-of-its-kind congressional college yearbook, which compares the cost of college tuition members of Congress experienced with the cost of college for today’s students. The yearbook, entitled When Congress Went to College, finds that the average student today paid nearly $20,000 a year more for college than current members of Congress.
Washington, D.C. – On Wednesday, Mick Mulvaney, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), informed his staff that he would be shutting down the bureau’s Office for Students and Young Consumers and folding it into the Office of Financial Education. In response, Mark Huelsman, Senior Analyst and student debt expert at Demos, issued the following statement:
Today, Democratic members of the House of Representatives released the Aim Higher Act, a bill that would reauthorize the Higher Education Act, the federal law which authorizes a broad range of student aid programs and governs the federal role in higher education.
Demos, a public policy organization based in New York, has this response:
Insurers justify the use of credit screening for insurance purposes by pointing to internal industry data showing that, on average, people with lower scores are more likely to make an insurance claim. The problem is, they don’t have a convincing explanation for why people with poor credit tend to make more claims.
Last month, the White House introduced a program that would effectively overhaul the tax code and, as Robert Kuttner put it, "locked [Obama] in as a defender of social insurance and working Americans." The five-pronged tax plan would cut rates and inefficient and unfair tax breaks, increase investment and growth in the United States, reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years and -- most contentiously -- institute the "Buffett rule."
By now it's pretty clear that Mitt Romney's recent claim about female job losses during the Obama presidency has more to do with selective number fudging and electoral pandering than factual accuracy.
It’s hard to imagine that an industry that has spent over $28 million on federal and state campaign contributions this election cycle alone would be victimized by government regulation, but that is the cry coming from the oil and gas industry. Well, more accurately, that is the cry coming from politicians in the pockets of those industries.